Product Description

World War II American fighter pilots are shot down over China and tortured. Dana Andrews, Richard Conte and Farley Granger struggle against tyranny.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21820 in DVD
• Brand: ANDREWS,DANA
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
One of Hollywood's most striking films of World War II has very little war in it, yet it whips up a fearsome power. A U.S. bomber that took part in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo crash-lands in Japanese-occupied China afterward. Captured, the officers and crew are hauled before a Japanese court and tried for war crimes. The trial is illegal and stacked against the Americans from the outset. But that doesn't stop it from developing into a fierce duel of nerves and icy politesse, especially between the U.S. commander (Dana Andrews) and the Japanese general (Richard Loo), who is the chief architect of the strategy to break the Americans and learn how the raid was carried out.

The story for The Purple Heart was written by none other than 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck, resurrecting one of his pseudonyms--Melville Crossman--from the days when he used to crank out gangster pictures and Rin Tin Tin movies for Warner Bros. Did it have any corollary in fact? Home front audiences in 1944 were ready to believe the worst, and what The Purple Heart asked them to believe was both terrible and inspiring. The film was directed, pungently, by Lewis Milestone, a two-time Oscar winner and Hollywood's most honored chronicler of the horrors of war (e.g., All Quiet on the Western Front); cinematographer Arthur Miller, Fox's master of black and white, worked wonders with the claustrophobic interiors. The solid cast also includes Richard Conte, Sam Levene, and Farley Granger. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

A Stirring WWII Film!
Dana Andrews is excellent as the Captain of a downed Army Air Corps B25 bomber over Japan. These US Flyers are captured and put on trial in a civilian court in front of the international press for suppossed "crimes against humanity". The Japanese secretly torture the Airmen one by one trying to discover if they came from a land base or a carrier. The story basically revolves around whether or not the American Airmen will tell the Japanese what they want to know. The final minutes of the film are quite stirring. The film music master, Alfred Newman did the score for the film and cleverly chose not to use very much underscoring music until the final scene in the film. Although the music he uses is borrowed and not original his adaptation of it is powerful!

Purple Heart Not Revealing Enough
The movie is a bit dramatic at times, but those who have studied the Doolittle raid and the treatment of the 8 men captured know it does not tell the American public enough about the terrible way humans treat other humans. If the Americans had been able to know how badly their prisoners were being treated, the Japanese Island might not be there today. Read Four Came Home for the best view, or study other exerpts of various items on the internet. I am writing about Dean Edward Hallmark, a graduate of Paris Junior College and one of the three who were executed.

Choked- Up
Most reviews miss what was for me, as a child, the most inspiring portion of the film. I would choke -up at the final scene, when the crew having decided to not tell the details of the raid leave the courtroom to face death, marching down the hallway with smiles on their faces to stirring music. It still grabs me today.